Summer Over Autumn: A Small Book of Small-Town Life

SUMMER OVER AUTUMN: A SMALL BOOK OF SMALL-TOWN LIFE
by Howard Mansfield
Bauhan Publishing
ISBN-10: 0872332500

“There’s a moment every summer when I look up at a nearby mountain and see a weakening of the green, and here and there like a splattering of paint, the first yellow leaves,” says Howard Mansfield. “Autumn is beginning to slip out from undercover. I think of this moment as its own distinct time, as Summer Over Autumn. This is the moment that precedes the fall snap, the great colors, and the final bare season in November.”

Howard Mansfield’s new book is about such moments. Summer Over Autumn is a small book of small-town life. He has written twenty-one short essays over the last thirty years, stories about neighbors, animals, tractors, trees, yard sales, funerals, money, and fidelity to time itself. It’s a book about the crooked path that is New Hampshire, about the parts that are postcard pretty, and the rougher parts that have a kind of hidden grace you have to live with to really see.

Mansfield doesn’t waste time with the “quaint postcard” view of a New England town, but shows readers where the real merit of small-town life lies. It can be found in the war waged against invasive, wild rosebushes, the hopeful placing of bets in the elm tree lottery, the artful dance of fundraising, and in bribing the band to play longer at the mechanic’s anniversary party. He brings us the hidden stories in one chair, a conversation in passing, or a Fourth of July fireworks display. Like Hancock’s crooked Main Street, the town and these stories are not just there for reminiscing; they are a “breathing lesson.”

Howard Mansfield is an everyday tourist and detective of the nearby. His ability to fully immerse himself in the here rather than rushing on towards there, has helped him create the wonderful essays in this small book full of big ideas.

Reviews

"A wonderful book. An insightful but droll glimpse inside the life of one New England town. Bringing us the small events and encounters with neighbors and townspeople, Howard goes straight to the heart of the inscrutable nature of small town life, of New England life. We are left with no choice but to love this book."

Read an Excerpt

"The first frost is a hog's holiday. It's as if the whole world tilts and vegetables roll toward the commodious jaws of our pig, Christopher Hogwood; zucchinis the size of baseball bats, tomatoes that were caught on the vine, broccoli that has bolted, squash going soft in one spot.

Our friends, gardeners, come and render unto Hogwood that which is his. The dreams of the winter seed catalog, the toil of the blackfly season, the loyal watering of July, he takes it all in, joyfully grinds it down—grabs a pumpkin and shakes it from side to side, crushes a beet, snout upward, with red beet juice dripping from his jowls."